you are not alone in this
by steepedinwords
Summary: Natasha and Steve go skating. Working title was 'it's a small world after all', because of reasons.


A/N: this is sort of a coda to the last bit of 'for all your friends and kindred'. I finished this thirty minutes into the New Year, and then promptly managed to lose the entire thing. This rewrite was done under the influence of not enough sleep and a lot of Chopin. Again, not sure how this happened; I had an enchanting mental picture of Natasha figure skating, and then lots of angst crept in. Title from Mumford & Son's _Timshel._

* * *

'Tasha, I'm not – I don't think this is a good idea.'

It is, in fact, an incredibly, monumentally bad idea. And Steve's got perfectly rational reason to be reluctant. His last memory, before seventy years of oblivion closed in, is of ice breaking, arctic waters closing over his head, and the panicked thought that he was going to drown with Peggy listening. Steve doesn't _do_ ice anymore.

When Natasha drew up beside him in her black SHIELD-issue SUV halfway through his morning run, rolled down the window and told him to get in, Steve had complied because you didn't argue with Natasha when she used that tone. But that was before he'd buckled in, checked the rearview mirror, and seen what was on the backseat. Two pairs of skates, one small and white in Tasha's size, and one larger, black, and obviously meant for him. To say he's not thrilled would be an understatement.

She keeps driving. They're already out of New York and he's not sure where they're going, but he's got a bad feeling about the whole thing. But Natasha just slips on her sunglasses, turns her music down (something folksy, soft voices and guitar) and says, 'Why not?'

'I can't skate,' he says, which is true.

'You can learn. You've learned to do everything else.'

Steve fights the panicked feeling. 'It's not – I can't do this, Natasha.'

She just throws him a Look he can't decipher. He's gotten better at understanding women since Peggy, and Natasha's usually patient with him, but then there are times like this where he just draws a blank. No idea what she's thinking. She flicks her signal light, turns onto a long, snow-covered road down a hill. At the bottom is a large frozen pond, ice cleared for use, and Steve's stomach clenches. Natasha pulls up beside it, leans over and says, '_ Steeeve_, come _oonnn_,' in a wheedling tone that makes him think she's been spending too much time with Clint and Tony, although pretty much any time with Clint and Tony is too much, and yeah, he's stalling. Natasha shuts off the engine.

'There's something else?' she asks. Deliberate, direct, careful. Very Natasha. Steve could just sit there; even Natasha can't budge him when he decides to be stubborn, but he hates being rude more than he hates the thought of cold water closing over his head, so he looks up, gives her the smile the USO showgirls taught him, all surface and no meaning. He can do this. It's not crashing a giant futuristic Nazi plane from forty thousand feet, after all. It'll be all right. 'You gonna teach me how this works?'

She gives him another Look, just long enough to let him know he hasn't fooled her, then opens her door and jumps down into the snow. It's blinding bright outside, warm for December.

There's a bench by the pond; Natasha's already lacing up her skates with quick, practiced movements when he joins her, sitting towards the middle of the bench so his weight doesn't tip it over. He unlaces his boots, shoves his feet into the black skates. He'd been hoping they wouldn't fit, but of course they do – Natasha's nothing if not observant. She watches him work at the laces for about fifteen seconds before saying, 'Not tight enough – here, let me,' and kneeling quickly in front of him, pulling the laces tight and explaining about ankle support. He lets her, the sooner to get this over with, and is soon standing wobbly on a thin strip of metal. Ahead, the frozen pond gleams in the sunlight.

Natasha's already gliding out onto the surface, red curls glinting. Steve takes two jerky steps onto the ice and falls hard, legs sprawling. Tasha's circling him, laughing like a girl, offering him a hand as he gets up and then giving him her other mittened hand, skating backwards while he strokes clumsily forward.

It gets easier, but he doesn't venture far from the shore. Natasha tries to teach him to turn, to use the blade to stop himself. She's all grace and precision, like a dancer (well, like an assassin; Steve's seen her work). The artist in Steve is delighting in colour and movement and just-perfect timing when Natasha leaps into the air, executing a perfect spin and landing, swaying on the edge of a blade. This isn't so bad, after all.

'Where did you learn to skate?' he asks. She looks surprised, and then her expression flits into the sadness they've learned to skirt around in each other. 'I don't remember,' is all she says, and it makes him angry that there are things she can't recall, things that should be part of her life. But then she's smiling bright again, darting off towards the centre of the ice.

The sun's getting hotter. Too warm, Steve pulls off his coat and throws it towards the bench, wondering if Tasha will let them leave if he bribes her with Starbuck, and then there's a sharp _crack_ and Natasha falls. _Through _the ice.

Blue sky, chill air stealing the breath from his lungs along with the shock, blue-white ice, shattered black hole gaping with shards like teeth, brilliant splash of Natasha's red hair: the scene burns into his brain. Steve freezes. He's let himself be pulled into this fantasy world of sparkling snow and sunlight, blades whispering over ice that's magical and not menacing, but now reality's snapped back with the crack of the ice and he's left gasping, feeling for a moment like he's the one who's suddenly been drenched in cold water and not Tash.

_Tash._ Steve manages to suck in a breath, and then, galvanised into action, shoves off blindly towards the hole in the ice where he can see her white face. It seems to take forever to get there, and he wishes he could just ditch the stupid skates, and then, _shit_, she's going under and he's going to lose her like he lost Bucky, just out of arm's reach –

and then he's skidding to a stop a few feet away, using his skate blades to slow himself down, leaning over without thinking about the cold water just underneath him. He's got Natasha's fingers, then her wrist, pulling desperately, and then she's out of the water, blue-lipped, scrabbling with her toe-picks to help him get her away from the rotten ice. He doesn't stop till they're a good ten feet away, and then they just lie there breathing hard for a minute.

'Steve,' Natasha says, hoarse, and then coughs. 'You can let go now.' He looks down to see his fingers still wrapped white-knuckled around her wrist, uncurls them and looks at the bloodless marks where they've been.

'Sorry,' he manages, 'that's gonna bruise,' and then he almost loses it right there, but there's no time. (There's never time, and he's afraid of what might happen if there ever is.) So he pulls himself to his feet, leans over to pick her up, icy water from her clothes soaking the thin fabric of his T-shirt. Natasha doesn't annihilate him for the liberty, which speaks for her condition, and she doesn't seem to mind his jerky skating as he hurries back as quickly as he can without tripping. His coat, by the edge of the pond, is still warm from his body heat, so the whole thing can't even have taken that long. Steve strips off Natasha's coat quickly, wraps her in his own. 'Keys?'

Her fingers are too cold to get into her half-frozen jacket pocket, so he gets them, clicks the command start button to warm up the SUV. Miraculously, it works even after a soaking. He turns his attention to getting their skates off, trying to ignore the ominous words running through his mind, _hypothermia, pneumonia_. Bucky must've died cold if the fall didn't kill him – and Steve's fingers fumble over Natasha's laces, his own familiar boots unlaced and shoved back on his feet. Tears fill his eyes for a brief moment he doesn't have time for; then Natasha's hand ghosts over his bent head once, twice, and he looks up, meeting her slight smile.

Screw this, there's no_ time_ and it's not like she's going to be driving. Steve gathers Tasha up, picks up her boots and sodden coat, brings her to the warmed vehicle. There's a blanket in the backseat, and he tucks it up to her chin, attempts to dry her hair a bit, turns all the heating vents towards her. Slides into the driver's seat and floors it up the hill. 'Tash, I need to call the hospital, how does your car phone work?'

She starts to shift an arm from her cocoon of blankets, but he stops her. 'Just talk me through it.' Natasha shoots him an annoyed look, still able to cow with a glance when she's half-frozen. Steve's too close to panicking to be intimidated, just follows her instructions and gets the name of the nearest hospital from the 911 operator, patches the address into the SUV's GPS. He glances over when he's done; Natasha's sodden red hair is sliding over her face and her head is nodding forward. 'Tash! Don't go to sleep on me!'

Green eyes slide open. ''M not sleeping. Yet.'

'Talk to me.'

''Bout what?' she mumbles.

'Anything.' Steve racks his brain. 'Whatever you want. Tell me something I don't know.'

'Your friend.' Natasha coughs. 'Sketchbook. Christmas. The drawing you showed me.'

'Yeah?'

'I knew him.'

Steve nearly goes off the road, overcorrects and almost hits the opposite ditch. '_What?_'

'Knew him,' she says again. 'Bucky, right? I – called him James.'

'Tash, he's dead. Bucky's dead, I watched him fall.' His voice is ratcheting up into embarrassingly high. 'That's not possible.' He won't stop, he can't take the time, but he steals a glance at Natasha in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes are clear, and no, that's not hypothermia talking.

'Dunno how, but – he was in th' Red Room. Was my friend.' She's slurring now, sleepy. 'He was alive fifteen years ago.'

Steve swallows hard. 'What hap – where is he now?'

'I don't know.' She sounds lost, which is odd for Natasha. 'He goes fuzzy after 'bout '85. Guess they – took that too.'

Steve almost misses the sign for the hospital, the GPS' insistence that he turn mere white noise. Makes the turn just in time. 'Tasha, we'll find him, I promise.'

She laughs, mocking. 'Think I – haven't tried? SHIELD has resources.'

'SHIELD doesn't tell us everything,' he insists, desperately. Pulls to a stop outside the hospital's emergency entrance. There's a gurney waiting just inside, uniformed people clustered around it. He leans over, grasps her shoulder through the blanket. 'We'll find him.'

In a couple minutes, she's being trundled down the hallway, despite her insistence that she walk under her own power. Steve follows as far as they'll let him; then he sinks into a small plastic waiting-room chair and, very quietly, starts to weep.

Natasha's still alive, and so is Bucky, and so is he, and the ice hasn't gotten any of them yet.


End file.
